Aardwolf

Description

Aardwolf is another fantasy mud with a long standing history stretching back to 1996. As is usual in a fantasy game, players enter the vast world of Andolor (containing over thirty thousandunique rooms), a world of uncharted seas and vast continents from the civilized Mesolar to the mysterious Abend, and try to make their way as an itinerant adventurer.

Players can take on one of 19 different races which include Lizardman, Centaur, Sprite, Shadow and Vampire, each with their own unique abilities and skills, and play through the game as one of 7 different classes, Mage, Psionic, Warrior, Paladin, Clerric, Ranger or thief. As you might expect, Players advance through combating enemies and through performing quests and goals. One particularly unique aspect of Aardwolf however is that players advance comparatively quickly as compared to some other role playing games. Once a player has advanced 200 levels with one class, she/he can work to first become a super hero of level 201, and then can choose either to stay a super hero and advance as a superhero, or can remort and take on a second class in addition to their previous one. Thus players eventually acquire the skills and spells of all 7 classes, after which they can "tier" and start the process again with a new race and yet more bennifits.

Each class also contains three specialitiesor subclasses, for example a Ranger can choose to be a hunter, specialising in boe combat and tracking, a shaman, specialising in earth and nature magic, or a crafter, adept in skinning and making items from the corpses of slane enemies.

Of course, all this advancement wouldn't be worth much if there weren't some interesting ways to progress, and though Aardwolf is a heavily combat focused game, at the same time it has a number of interesting factors to make the combat unique. Firstly, there are the combinations of racial skills, spells and abilities to play with, indeed Aardwolf makes these easier to use than several muds with some commands such as the "spellup" command which will automatically cast all buffing spells (spells that give temporary advances), at once.

Second, Aardwolf has a very unique approach to areas, quests and goals. The game is devided into a large number of specific areas. Each area has an individual goal to complete, everything from ridding the farmer's fields of nasty pests to preventing the summoning of ancient evils. These goals are easy to find and follow progress in sinse there are specific commands for each and one per area, though some might take figuring oiut complex steps such as talking to the right npc or looking at the right object.

As well as goals, Aardwolf also has a major system of pregenerated quests and campaigns as well, in which players are tasked to go and find one or more given monsters in an area and slay them, earning quest points that can be used for a variety of things from upgrading weapons to wishing for special powers. These quests are also a great way to quickly see a lot of the game, especially given Aardwolf's rather none standard approach to navigation.

Aardwolf is one of the easiest games to navigate thanks to a very advanced system of portals and speedwalks. For example from the sity of Ayler where players begin, the "runto" command can be used to quickly move to any area of the game, or to rooms within a specific area (use the find command to see what is around or get more standard map directions). This makes Aardwolf a very quick game to play sinse it's possible to get a quest, immediately be told what area the quest is in and set out streight away, plus you can use the "where" command to find which room your quest target monster is in. .

The areas themselves are always well described, and though they can range from the eclectic exploration of your own unconscious to a deadly serious tournament of arms, any fans of exploring unique places certainly won't be disappointed, particularly sinse flying, underwater breathing or sometimes looking around for exits in unusual places might be required from time to time as well. .

Though Aardwolf is very much primarily a combat focused game, there are some other activities available, from joining clans and engaging in raides or clan wars, to playing laser tag or entering the randomly generated combat maze for glory, not to mention a number of daily events from trivia challenges to poker tournaments.

With it's focus on being extremely easy to pick up and play without need for things like complex navigation, Aardwolf is a very friendly mud to Vi players, particularly sinse it has less of a proportion of aggressive monsters that attack without warning than some games, meaning there's far more opportunity for looking around and exploring (especially with the speed walk system). The game also has a Vi section on the wiki found here which details a few commands and customizations, and how to navigate one particularly problematic area.

Even finding equipment is easy in the mud, given that the "eqsearch" command can be used to find the best gear available (other than quest gear), and various tools are found around the net to help finding items and locations such as The aardwolf Gaardian vi archive A vi friendly system of in game maps and Hador's item database A useful tool for finding any in game items and where to get them (a perfect accompanyment to the game's eqsearch command).

As a bonus, Aardwolf is also free to play, though on occasions the mud will accept donations, and these donations can be exchanged for bennifits such as quest points or extra training sessions for your character. Donating however, (especially since it is only available sporadically), is definitely not necessary to progress. .

With new areas and goals being added frequently, Aardwolf is always expanding, and with the shear amount of places to see and goals to complete, as well as infinite numbers of pregenerated quests you won't run out of activities too quickly.

The player base is extremely friendly so don't be afraid to ask on the various in game chat channels for assistance, or just dropp in to say hello. As well as asking for assistance, the Aardwolf wiki is a great resource. Aardwolf also has probably one of the most fun, informative and best designed new player tutorials of any mud, so it's also worth going through the newbie academy to see what you find (aside from the fact you will get lots of nice rewards too).

Also note that as a mud, you'll need a working client such as Mushclient or Vipmud. To connect just point your client to aardmud.org port 23

With a friendly atmosphere and some of the most convenient controls and commands of any Mud, Aardwolf is a great game for newbies and experienced mudders alike, and proof that a game based around pure combat can still be a huge amount of fun. .

Community

The following users have added this game to their favorites: Mirage, MikeFont